The minyan had already gathered in the pale light. In these times, thought Aryeh, it was all too easy to gather ten. An outbreak of plague, not quite one year earlier, had claimed so many lives that above twenty eldest sons still came to pray each day, marking their season of sorrow, reciting the prayer for their dead.
Aryeh made his way to the bimah. A blue velvet cloth, the color of midnight, lay across the table. It had been sewn by his daughter when she was still a little girl. Even then, her stitching had been fine and even. But the cloth had grown shabby now, like almost everything in the little room. Aryeh had worn the nape off the velvet at the places where his hands gripped the bimah. This did not trouble him, any more than the benches that wobbled or the floor that rippled unevenly underfoot. These things were signs of use, signs of life, evidence that human beings came here, many of them and often, trying to talk to their God.
“Magnified and sanctified may his great name be….” The voices of the mourners rose as one. Kaddish had always been one of Aryeh’s favorite prayers—the prayer for the dead that did not mention death, or grief, or loss, but only life and glory and peace. The prayer that turned its face away from burial plots and moldering remains and set its eyes on the firmament: “May a great peace from heaven—and life!—be upon us and upon all Israel, and say all, amen! May he who makes peace in his high places make peace upon us and all Israel, and say all, amen!”
Aryeh did not linger after the morning service. He exchanged just a few brief words with his congregants on the way out. Neither did he remain at home, where he feared the intuitive scrutiny of Sarai’s loving gaze. He left her, still cooking, calmly preparing the food they would eat that night, and the next day, for on Shabbat itself no work would be done. When he left, she was patiently peeling apart each onion, layer by layer, inspecting the pieces with meticulous attention lest the tiniest insect lay within. To eat such an insect, even by accident, would be to violate the commandment against consuming any of those living things that swarm.
Aryeh made his way to the home of a strazzaria dealer who had prospered enough to set aside part of his house as a library. Because Aryeh had tutored the man’s sons, he had been invited to use the room for his own quiet study. There, he carefully unwrapped Doña de Serena’s haggadah, which he had protected in a piece of linen cloth. If he were to go to her to confess his lies and theft, at least he would not go empty-handed. He would read the book carefully to determine if it was safe to submit it to the Holy Office, and if so, he would take it to Vistorini that very day. With luck he would be able to retrieve it, with the necessary words safely inscribed, and visit Reyna de Serena after the Sabbath.
He eased the silver clasps open. What a place must Sepharad have been that the Jews who lived there could make such a book as this! Did they live like princes, these Jews? They must have done, to afford such an amount of gold and silver leaf, to pay such craftsmen as the silversmith and artists of the rank of this illuminator. And now, their descendants wandered destitute over the face of the earth, looking for any safe place that would allow them to lay down their heads in peace. Perhaps there had once been many books like this one, just as fine, all ashes now. Gone and lost and forgotten.
But he could not afford to give in to lament, or to bedazzlement. No good wondering about the illuminator—surely a Christian? For what Jew would have learned to make images such as the Christians made?—or about the sofer, who had inscribed the text in such a lovely and accomplished hand.
These stories, intriguing as they were, he had to put from him. Instead, he had to put himself into the mind of Giovanni Domenico Vistorini, a hunter’s mind, fierce in pursuit of the slightest hint of heresy. A suspicious and perhaps a hostile mind. Aryeh hoped that Vistorini, the scholar, would appreciate the book for its beauty and its antiquity. But Vistorini the censor had burned so many beautiful books.
So Aryeh turned the pages of illumination until he arrived at the first pages of Hebrew text. “This is the bread of affliction….” He began to read the familiar story of the Passover as if he were encountering it for the first time.
Vistorini raised the glass to his lips. Not bad, the wine the Jew had brought him. He did not recall drinking kosher wine before. He took another swallow. Not bad at all.
No sooner had he set his glass down than the Jew reached for the wineskin and refilled it. He noted, with pleasure, that it was a very large wineskin, and that the Jew’s own glass stood, barely touched, glowing red in the low afternoon light. He would have to draw this business out, that would be the wise thing. For, once he had said what he proposed to say, the Jew would leave, and likely take his wineskin with him.
“This book of yours, are there many like it, hiding under bushels in your Geto?”
“None that I have ever seen. Truly, I think very few such books have survived from the community of Sepharad.”
“Whose book is it?”
Aryeh had expected the question, and dreaded it. He could not betray Reyna de Serena. “Mine,” he lied. Aryeh hoped to use whatever modicum of friendship or its simulacrum that stood between himself and the priest.
“Yours?” The priest’s eyebrow rose skeptically.
“I had it from a merchant who came here from Apulia.”
The priest gave a short laugh. “Did you so? You, who are always crying poor? You could afford to buy a codex as fine as this?”
Aryeh’s mind raced. He could say he received it for a service, but that seemed unlikely. What service could he do that would be of such a value? Because his sin was at the forefront of his mind, he blurted out the next thing that came into it. “I won it from him, at a game of chance.”
“Strange stakes! Judah, you amaze me. What game?”
The rabbi colored. The conversation was veering rather too close to the marrow. “Chess.”
“Chess? Hardly a game of chance.”
“Well, the merchant had a rather inflated view of his skills. He took a chance in wagering his book upon them. So in his case, yes, one might say that chess was a game of chance.”
The priest laughed again, this time really amused. “Words. To you, they are just sweetmeats in your mouth. I forget that, when I do not see you.” He took another large swallow of wine. He was feeling more warmly toward the rabbi. What had it been that had irritated him so on their last meeting? He couldn’t now quite recall it. Pity he had to disappoint the fellow, really.
“Well, I am glad to hear that this was the way of it. For what comes by chance will be the more easily let go.”
Aryeh sat up, rigid in his chair. “You can’t mean…? You don’t mean to say that you will not pass this book?”
The priest leaned across the desk and placed a hand on Aryeh’s shoulder. It was unlike him to willingly touch a Jew. “I regret to say it, but yes, that is precisely the situation.”
Aryeh shrugged off the priest’s hand and stood up, anger and disbelief animating him.
“On what possible grounds? I have read every page of text, every psalm, every prayer, every song. There is nothing, not one word of it, that contravenes the Index in any particular.”
“You are right. There is nothing of that nature in the text.” Vistorini’s voice was low and calm.
“Well, then?”
“I do not speak of the text. There is, as you say, nothing against the church in the text.” He paused. Aryeh’s pounding heart seemed loud to him in the silence. “There is, I regret to say, a grave heresy in the illumination.”
Aryeh covered his eyes with his hand. It had not even occurred to him to closely study the illuminations. He had been dazzled by them, but had not lingered to parse their meaning in any detail. He sat down again, heavily, in the priest’s carved chair.
“Which one?” he said, his voice a whisper.
“Oh, more than one, I am afraid.” The priest reached across the desk for the codex, bumping his wineglass as he did so. Aryeh put out a hand, reflexively, to steady it. Then, in the vain hope of mellowing the priest, he
reached for the wineskin and filled the glass to the brim.
“One need not look far,” said Vistorini, opening the book at the first set of illuminations. “See, here? The artist tells the story of Genesis. He gives us the division of light from dark. So, and very nicely done, the severe contrast of the white and black pigments. Austere and eloquent. Nothing there of a heretical nature. The next one: ‘And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.’ Lovely, the use of the gold leaf to indicate the ineffable presence of God. Again, nothing heretical. But the next, and the next, and the three that follow. Look, and tell me: what do you see?”
Aryeh looked, and his head became light. How could he have not seen? The earth on which the Almighty created the plants and the animals—in each and every illumination, it was shown as an orb. That the earth was round, and not flat, was now the opinion of a majority of theologians. Interesting that this artist of a century earlier, when Christians were being sent to the stake for this belief, espoused it. But that, alone, would not condemn the book. The illuminator had ventured further into dangerous territory. In the top right corner of three of the paintings, above the earth, was a second gold-leafed orb, clearly meant to be the sun. Its placement was ambiguous.
Aryeh looked up at Vistorini. “You believe this implies the heliocentric heresy?”
“‘Implies’! Rabbi, don’t be disingenuous. This is clearly in support of the heresy of the Saracen astronomers, of Copernicus, whose book is on the Index, of that man in Padua, Galileo, who will soon enough be brought before the Inquisition to answer for his errors.”
“But the drawings—one need not read them that way. The orbs, the concentric rings, they might be decoration, merely. Surely, if one were not looking for it, the implication could pass unnoticed….”
“But I am looking for it.” Vistorini drained his glass, and the rabbi, distracted, refilled it. “Because of that man Galileo, the church is now especially concerned with the promulgation of this heresy.”
“Dom Vistorini, I implore you. For any kindness I may have done you in the past, for the many years we have known each other. Please, spare this book. I know you are a man of learning, a man who respects beauty. You see how beautiful this book is….”
“All the more reason to burn it. Its beauty might one day seduce some unwitting Christian to think well of your reprehensible faith.” Vistorini’s mood was elevated. He was enjoying this. The rabbi was entirely in his power. The man’s voice, that mellifluous voice, was breaking. Vistorini had never known him to care quite so passionately about one book. He had a sudden idea that would prolong the pleasure of this afternoon. He held up his empty glass to the window, as if studying the fine curve of the goblet.
“Perhaps…but no. I should not suggest it—”
“Father?” Aryeh leaned forward, his eyes avid. He fumbled for the wineskin and filled the priest’s glass.
“Well, I might redact the offending pages.” He ran his finger over the vellum, flipping it back and forward. “Four pages—not so very many—and then there would still remain the key drawings, of the flight from Egypt, that is the main point of the work….”
“Four pages.” Aryeh imagined the knife detaching the vellum folios. He felt actual pain in his chest, sharp, as if the knife were stabbing him.
“Here’s an idea,” said Vistorini. “Since you say you won this book in a game of chance, what do you say if we play another to determine its fate? You win, I will redact and spare the book. I win, it goes to the flames.”
“What game?” Aryeh whispered.
“What game?” Vistorini sat back in his chair, sipped the wine, and pondered. “Not, I think, chess. I have a premonition that you would best me there, as you did the merchant from—where did you say?”
Aryeh, tense and upset, could not for the moment recall his fabrication. He feigned a coughing fit to mask his confusion.
“Apulia,” he blurted at last.
“Yes, Apulia. So you said. Well, I do not want to risk emulating the fate of that unfortunate man. Cards, I have none, nor die to cast.” He continued, idly, turning the pages. “I have it. Let us play a version of lots, but fit the game to the wager. I will write the words of censor’s permission, Revisto per mi, each one on a slip of parchment. You shall draw them blind. As you draw them, if the order of words is correct, I will inscribe that word in the book. If you draw the word out of order, I will not complete the inscription, and you lose.”
“But that means a game in which I have to win a three-to-one wager three times. The odds, Father, are too steep.”
“Steep? Yes, perhaps so. Say this, then: if your first draw is correct, you may remove that slip from the second draw. Then your odds improve to even. I think that sounds a fair game.”
Aryeh watched the priest’s hand inscribe the longed-for words on parchment scraps and drop them, one by one, into an empty coffer on his desk. His heart skipped as he noticed something the priest, who was already quite drunk, had not perceived. One of the scraps he had chosen was of a lower grade than the other two, just a little thicker. It was the scrap on which Vistorini had scrawled the middle word, per. Aryeh thanked God. Suddenly, his odds were much improved. He prayed to God to guide his hand as he reached within the box. His fingers quickly identified the thicker parchment, and rejected it. Now it was even odds. Right or wrong. Light or dark. The blessing or the curse. Therefore, choose life. He closed his hand on the scrap, drew it out, and handed it to the priest.
Vistorini’s expression did not change. He placed the scrap facedown on his desk. Then he reached for the haggadah, opened it to the last page of Hebrew text, dipped his quill, and wrote, in a fine hand, the word revisto.
Aryeh tried not to let the joy show in his face. The book was saved. He had only to select the thick scrap and this terrible game would be over. He reached again into the coffer, this time giving silent thanks to God.
He handed the thick scrap to Vistorini. This time, the priest’s face did not remain impassive. The corners of his mouth turned down. He pulled the haggadah toward him, angrily, and wrote the next two words: per mi.
Then he glared at Aryeh, who was beaming. “It is worth nothing, of course, unless I sign and date it.”
“But you…but we…Father, you gave your word.”
“How dare you!” Vistorini stood up suddenly, bumping against his heavy oak desk. The wine lapped in his glass. The liquor had worked in him to that sour point at which anger banishes euphoria.
“How dare you talk about ‘my word.’ You come to me with this implausible fabrication—this, let us be frank, this patent lie on your lips about winning this book, and you talk about the giving of my word! You presume on my goodwill, you dare to infer we are friends. Would that the boat that carried your accused forebears here from Spain had never reached dry land! Venice gives you a safe home, and you do not keep within the few rules she requires of you. You set up printing houses against the laws of the state and pass around your filth about our Blessed Savior. You, Judah, God has given you wit and made you learned, and yet you harden your heart to his truth and turn your face from his grace. Get out of here! And tell whoever really owns this book that the rabbi lost it in a game of chance. That way you will spare them the thought of all that fine gold leaf going up in flames. You Jews love your gold, I know that.”
“Domenico, please…I will do anything you ask…please….” The rabbi’s voice was ragged. He could not get his breath.
“Get out! Now. Before I charge you with promulgating heresy. Do you want to serve ten years on a galley with your feet in chains? Do you want a dark cell in the Leads? Get out!”
Judah fell to his knees and kissed the priest’s cassock. “Do what you will to me,” he cried. “But save the book!” The priest’s only answer was a shove that sent the rabbi sprawling. He rose to his feet with difficulty and staggered from the room, down the hall, and outside, into the canaletto. He was weeping and gasping, tearing at his beard like a man in mourning. All around
him, pedestrians turned to stare at the mad Jew. He felt their eyes, their hatred. He began to run. The blood eddied, trapped and sluggish, in the fissured chambers of his breaking heart. As his feet landed on the hard stone, fists seemed to strike his chest, the blows of a giant.
When the boy came with the taper, Vistorini had just poured the last glass from the now-empty wineskin. At first, in dim light and in his drunkenness, he thought it was Aryeh, come back to beg from him, and he snarled. But then the boy swam into focus, and Vistorini signaled that yes, he should light the candles on his desk.
When the boy went out, he pulled the haggadah into the pool of light. He began to hear the voice in his head, the voice he didn’t usually allow himself to hear. But at night, sometimes, in dreams, and when he’d had too much to drink…
The voice, the dark room, the sense of shame, the prickling fear. The carved Madonna in the niche to the right of the doorstep. The child’s hand, enfolded in a larger, calloused one that guided the tiny fingers to touch the polished wood of her toe. “You must do this, always.” The blowing sand of that desolate town. The voices: Arabic, Ladino, Berber? He did not know any longer which language. And the other one, the language he must not speak.
“Dayenu!” He cried the word aloud. “Enough!”
He dragged a hand through his greasy hair, as if he could drag the memories from his mind and cast them away. He knew now, perhaps he had known always, the truth of that past about which he must not think, must not even dream. He saw the smashed foot of the Madonna, the small roll of parchment that fell out. He had been screaming, terrified, and struggling in some rough grip, but through his tears, he had seen it. The Hebrew script. The hidden mezuzah. Through his tears, he had seen the words “Love the lord thy God with thy whole heart….” He had seen the Hebrew letters, crushed into the dirt beneath the boot of the man who had come to arrest his parents and put them to death as crypto-Jews.